Scientific Advisory Board

Prof. Romeo Cecchelli

Prof. Romeo Cecchelli

Prof. Romeo Cecchelli graduated as a physiologist and holds a PhD in Physiology and a ‘Doctorat es sciences’ in Biochemistry from the University of Lille.

He soon became interested in the transport of drugs across the blood-brain barrier and in the early 90’s he set up, at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, an in vitro blood-brain barrier (BBB) model (consisting of a coculture of brain capillary endothelial cells and glial cells). This model has shown a high correlation between in vitro and in vivo permeability for a wide range of molecules. In 1997, he was appointed a full Professor in Cell Biology (Artois University, Lens, France) and was the first vice-president of Artois University in charge of the research from 2005 to 2015. He was involved in several European research programs: he was the coordinator of BBB follow-up (an ECVAM funded study, 2006-2007) and participated in FP6 ACUTOX (2006-2010), FP7 PREDICT IV and EUSTROKE (WP leader: In vitro models of the blood brain barrier, 2010-2013). He contributed to several research contracts with pharmaceutical companies (Servier, Sanofi Astrazeneca, etc.). In 2014, his lab developed a stable and reproducible human blood-brain barrier model derived from hematopoietic stem cells (patent n°WO/2014/203087), showing a very nice correlation with human in vivo data.

Prof. David Devos

Prof. David Devos

David Devos obtained his ‘Doctor of Neurology’ and ‘Doctor of Neuroscience’ degrees from the University of Lille, France. Between 2002 and 2010, he worked as a hospital physician in the Department of Neurology of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire of Lille, where he is now Professor in Medical Pharmacology (Lille University, INSERM UMR_S1171).

His main research interest is the development of new disease-modifying strategies in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but also dementia and cerebellar ataxia.

His research is mainly based upon clinical trials but also includes preclinical, translational and clinical studies in neuropsychopharmacology. He was directly involved in 28 studies including 14 multicentric and 14 as the coordinator (8 in progress), including the European multicentric study, FAIRPARK-II, of Conservative iron chelation as a disease-modifying strategy in Parkinson’s disease (http://fairpark2.eu). He received several prizes, notably the Prize of innovation “From Bench to bed” of Eurasanté in 2015 for the innovative therapeutic strategy of DIVE (Dopamine with intracerebroventricular administration) and the European pharmacology scientific award EACPT for the best scientific work of the two last years in 2013.

Dr. Georg Haase

Dr. Georg Haase

Dr. Georg Haase, MD PhD, is a team leader at Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone in Marseille and co-coordinator of research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at Marseille’s Center of Excellence in Neurodegeneration DHUNE.

Georg Haase has pioneered gene therapy approaches in ALS and investigated neurodegenerative pathways in cellular and and animal models of ALS and related motor neuron diseases. His lab has acquired unique expertise in isolating pure motor neurons by fluorescent-activated cell sorting (FACS) from human iPSc-derived cultures and embryonic mice and in analysing them by flow cytometry.

Dr. Karim Si-Tayeb

Dr. Karim Si-Tayeb

Karim Si-Tayeb has developed an expertise in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) differentiation and disease modelling. His experience on liver chronic disease acquired during his Ph.D. at the university of Bordeaux, France, and on liver development during his postdoctoral work at the Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI, USA) led him to focus his research on the study of liver metabolic disease. In 2012, he joined Bertrand Cariou’s team at the thorax institute in Nantes (http://www.umr1087.univ-nantes.fr/equipe-iv-dyslipidemies-et-lipotoxicite–1518230.kjsp) to study lipid disorders such as familial hypercholesterolemia and familial hypobetalipoproteinemia. He is currently participating to the RHU CHOPIN (https://rhuchopin.fr/), which aims at decreasing cardiovascular events in hypercholesterolemic patients through precision medicine.